Web Marketing Strategies for Economic Resilience

Intro

The last few years have been difficult for businesses across almost all industries. Brexit, COVID-19, and global conflict have sent shockwaves through markets and disrupted otherwise stable industries.

Future economic predictions suggest that many firms will face a difficult few years, too. Data collected by accounting giant KPMG suggests that real growth has slowed to 0.4% while inflation remains high as businesses strive to rebuild their margins.

Navigating the choppy waters of commerce requires a resilient approach to marketing. A research-driven, personalised marketing campaign can cut costs while maximising reach and engagement. A successful web marketing strategy can empower other departments, too, by gathering key consumer insights that can be utilized by sales, finance, and product development.

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Inflation-Resistant Marketing

Global inflation appears to have abated after peaking at a high of 8.7%. However, economic indicators suggest that inflation rates of over 5% are here to stay as firms look to pass on their costs to consumers and pad their profits by reestablishing their margins. This can put a strain on your supply chain and turn consumers away from your business. Responding to climbing costs is key if you want to keep your customers and build brand loyalty.

Start building an inflation-resistant web marketing strategy by learning more about the pressures your customers face. For example, if you do business in the U.S., find out which states buy the most from your firm. States with high inflation, like Florida, Louisiana, and Tennessee all face a sharp rise in the cost of living and will require a unique approach to marketing.

Being aware of factors that impact your customer’s quality of life is key if you want to build your appeal in new markets. For example, if you’re looking to break into a state like Florida, you should be aware that it ranks 36th in price parity. This means Floridians face a high cost of living compared to the average American. Responding by offering deals and discounts that ease housing, transportation, and apparel costs is key.

As a web marketer, you can target folks who face high living expenses by using content marketing to build your brand. Content marketing offers consumers high-quality, entertaining video or visual content that is usually posted to social media. It adds value to customer’s lives and convinces them that your brand is worth paying attention to. This is key if you’re looking to undercut the competition on costs but still want to maintain a brand image associated with high-quality goods.

Psychological Marketing

Psychological marketing is an approach that foregrounds consumer’s underlying motivations. Investing in psychological marketing ensures that you understand your stakeholder's social identity and can help you predict the way they’ll respond to market pressures during economic downturns.

A robust psychological marketing strategy can help you reposition your brand in difficult times, too. For example, you can use colour psychology to change your official brand palette. Colour psychology teaches us that blue is associated with calmness and relaxation, while green is commonly associated with growth.

Tapping into these insights can help you connect with consumers who feel stressed about economic headwinds and want to align with brands that bring them a sense of optimism or tranquillity.

Crafting web content that uses psychological insights is key to maintaining your appeal amongst existing customers, too. Consumers want to feel understood by the brands they align with and will stick with businesses that adapt in the face of economic uncertainty. As a marketing team, you can use this to create content that is personalised to their buyer personas. Start by leaning on insights like:

• Geographical location
• Purchase history
• Browsing behaviour

Embolden your personalization strategy by incorporating consumer surveys that help you understand customer psychology. This helps you understand why, for example, folks from London are looking for your product and how it will compare to competitors' offerings. This kind of personalized approach can be expensive, though, so you’ll want to explore personalization at scale to maximize your ROI.

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Personalisation at Scale

Minimising your costs in times of economic downturn is key. Fortunately, personalised web marketing represents a low-cost, high-yield option for most businesses. Improve your ROI and personalise your marketing at scale by:

• Use AI analytics to gather and parse data
• Convert insights into personalised recommendations and landing pages
• Elevate retention by utilizing predictive analytics to preempt potential issues

When using personalisation, be clear about how you collect and utilize data. Potential customers appreciate recommendations and tailored experiences but want to maintain a sense of privacy while browsing online. This ensures that you’re able to craft content with a competitive edge without imposing on the lives of your consumers.

A transparent approach will serve you well during times of economic hardship, too. Folks will be far more likely to buy from your brand if they feel you understand their needs and respect their privacy. Conversely, failing to declare your use of data will damage your brand reputation and push customers to your competitors.

Keyword Research

During times of economic hardship, your best strategy is to double down on web marketing tactics that work. This means that you should go back to the basics of SEO and reignite your keyword research program.

Start by finding a keyword research tool that works. An effective keyword tool helps you find low-competition, long-tail keywords that align with your web marketing strategy. You can also

use these tools to track keyword history and discover seasonal trends.

The best tools today display SERP features like shopping previews and common questions, too. This means you can target keywords that have a low cost-per-click and are likely to yield sales. Gathering these insights is key if you’re committed to building a web presence on your site and want to flesh out your blog. Keyword research helps you brainstorm relevant topics for your site so highly qualified leads will find your webpage before they land on a competitor’s.

Tracking ROI

Keeping track of your return on investment is key when trying to build economic resilience. Put simply, you can’t afford to spend big on projects that fail to yield profit or boost your brand. However, tracking your ROI can be tricky during economic downturns, as you may struggle to differentiate between broad market trends and the effect of your marketing materials. Start by tracking key ROI metrics like:

• Cost Per Lead
• Average Sale Price
• Return on Ad Spend
• Overall Revenue
• Conversion rate

These metrics give you a holistic understanding of your financial position and help you track your ROI over time. That said, you shouldn’t overly rely on ROI metrics alone, as this can lead to short-sighted decision-making. Rather, temper your quantitative financial metrics with qualitative insights related to brand perception and overall market trends.

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Creating Agility

Operational agility is key during times of economic turmoil. Your marketing team needs to be able to respond quickly to pressure like supply chain bottlenecks, global conflict, and budget cuts.

As a leader in the marketing department, try to instill an ethos of enterprise agility amongst your peers. Enterprise agility empowers employees and boosts your web marketing strategy by cutting down on red tape during the decision-making process. Embracing agility improves customer satisfaction by an average of 30% and ensures you’re at the cutting edge of the web marketing game.

Agility takes many forms in web marketing but is most evident in sub-fields like social media marketing. Rather than clearing each post with multiple levels of management, trust content experts to leverage trends that resonate with audiences and improve brand image. This foregrounds the importance of adaptability in web marketing and shows your social team that you trust them to make strategic decisions that improve brand image.

Agile marketing teams tend to foreground customer needs, too. This is a solid strategy during economic downturns, when shoppers may be more likely to look around for a firm that meets their demands. Restructuring to improve agility may even help you trim some of the fat and identify opportunities for future expansion when your industry returns to normal.

Expanding Operations

It’s easy to get stuck in a cycle of doom and gloom when your market is facing inflationary headwinds and falling demand. However, there are always “winners” during any economic downturn and recession — just ask Zoom, which has consolidated pandemic gains and brought in $1,074 million in the first quarter of 2023 alone.

Expanding your web marketing strategy with resilience in mind requires patience and careful planning. If your budget suddenly expands due to a high-performing product or service, consider reinvesting some of the funds into emerging web marketing strategies like:

• AI Article Writers
• Virtual Reality Experiences
• Voice Search
• Omnichannel Marketing

These strategies aren’t currently part of mainstream marketer’s playbooks but promise to change the way we approach customers. By spending a little extra on speculative tech now, you could secure a first-mover advantage for your firm that brings in big profits later down the line.

Conclusion

Web marketing during a period of economic uncertainty is all about going back to basics. Strive to learn more about your customers and adapt your approach to suit market trends. Keep a close eye on your ROI, but don’t be afraid to try experimental technology if your budget suddenly expands. This will bake resilience into your web marketing strategy and protect you against changes in your industry.